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Bush’s Good Right HandBy Carol Davidek-Waller01/15/08 “ICH” - — - Very few will argue that Bush years have been a disaster. The nation is weaker in every way; militarily, economically and morally. Our international influence has waned and we are at odds with practically everyone. The national frustration level is surging. That anger is being directed at the usual suspects. It’s our fellow Americans fault for not voting or being too stupid, superstitious or lazy to vote their own interests.It’s the fault of the GOP for crossing the line between criminality and politics as usual and for their cultish adherence to outmoded ideology. It’s the PNAC neocons, egged on by AIPAC, that have dragged the country into senseless wars that suck the treasury dry. The plutocrats are despised for their pathological greed. Lobbyists are blamed for polluting the political process and slanting the playing field toward the narrow, dissolute interests of their employers. The corporate media are blamed for bundling the sacking of America into deceptive sound bites and entertaining lies. But even a cabal as muscular as this might find it difficult to install an unpopular, felonius administration and implement an agenda that hundreds of millions of people reject. It takes a great deal to overwhelm the fundamental decency of most Americans. Enter the Democratic Party leadership and senior Congressional Democrats. The devolutionary, right wing owe their success to these unlikely allies. The Bush administration if it would have existed at all, has exceeded their wildest dreams because of the unflagging support of the Democrats. It’s a matter of public record starting with the 2000 election. Can anyone imagine the GOP or any reasonably robust political party walking away from a presidential election they won? Can you imagine them silencing their own membership to enable the theft? Twice? Do you think a real political party would stress over looking like “sore losers”? Can you imagine the GOP voting for legislation that gave control of vote tabulation to Democratic partisans? Can you imagine another political party not acting to remove the imposter when their victory was confirmed? The Democrats could not have more helpful toward the GOP if they were working for them. When Bush came out of hiding after 9-11, the Democrats failed to ask any of the important questions. Why did all four agencies charged with our defense stand down? Where were our jets and why? Since when do Vice Presidents play war games and issue orders to shoot down passenger jets?The Democratic Senate even agreed not to have an independent investigation! When pressure from concerned citizens and survivors became impossible to ignore, the Democrats allowed the Bush White House, a target of the investigation, to help select the panel, limit the scope of the investigation, withhold information and testify off the record. The complete report, such as it is, has yet to be released. The actions of the Democrats have shielded the White House from the consequences of the bloodiest screw up in our history, allowing them to remain in office and do their worst. The Democrats are continuing to shield them to this day by refusing to impeach, not only for the criminal neglect of 9-11 or worse but for the crimes and gross abuse of power committed in the wake of 9-11. The Democrats just can’t do enough for the Bush White House. They enabled unconstitutional legislation that legalizes the criminality of the administration and their supporters. At the same time they are issuing get out of jail free cards to confessed felons, they are working to restrict our civil liberties in an unprecedented way. The Dems vote en masse for the fascistic Patriot Acts and the Democratic controlled House thinks it should be a crime to think bad thoughts about your government, effectively criminalizing most of the nation. The GOP could never have ratified torture and extraordinary rendition, suspended Habeas Corpus and Posse Comatatis or ripped half of the Bill of Rights out of the Constitution unless the Congressional Democrats helped them. And help they did; front, right and center. The Democrats didn’t have to give away the Supreme Court to corporate interests and religious zealots. They promised not to but they did it anyway. Very helpful, indeed. It took about a year for the deception of the invasion of Iraq to be exposed and for support for the war to evaporate. Did the Democrats do as the Geneva Conventions and domestic law require and do everything in their power to end the illegal war? Did they filibuster, call up the Hague, take their case to the people and vote no in protest? Nope. They shielded the perpertrators in the White House and put the war on steroids. They voted for every appropriation the bloated the Pentagon’s budget and lined the pockets of war profiteers, cheats and mercenaries. The only criticism leveled at the GOP by the Democrats was that Bush/Cheney and their assorted generals have failed to secure Iraq and steal their resources quickly enough and inexpensively enough. Since the Democrats have taken over both Houses of Congress there has been no investigation into criminal acts that pushed the country into war and no real effort to stop the bloodshed. It’s a monstrous betrayal. The Democrats response is unnatural in the extreme. Real political parties spend most of their energy jockeying for power. The Democrats helped their opponents increase theirs. The steppingstone to the executive mansion and legislative majorities is the exploitation of the other guy’s screw-ups. When a huge majority of voters are screaming for action, it is unheard of for a political party to put their noses in the air and walk away. Garden variety instincts of self preservaton have kept the nation from going off the deep end for several hundred years. There has been no cogent explanation for what appears to be self destructive behavior. The Democrats didn’t stop at throwing elections and helping the GOP to establish an imperial presidency and launch imperialistic wars. They joined the GOP in everything from reviving the worst polluters on the planet, the nuclear power and oily carbon crowd, to rescuing the feared military industrial complex from well deserved extinction. They gave corporations with bigger budgets than many countries more wealth in subsudies and tax relief. They gave them more rights than the people they exploit and poison. They participated wholeheartedly in Bush’s drunken fiscal irresponsponsibility that dwarfed even Reagan’s improvidence. They helped off shore your job even when the robotic GOP declined to do so. Sometimes they all joined the party, like the AUMF, the Patriot Act and Medicare D (a huge subsidy to big pharma) and sometimes they worked in small rotating cadres who pushed the steaming pile of legislation across the finish line. CAFTA, the draconian bankruptcy bill and the worst of Bush’s nominees fall into that category. Don’t buy the election rhetoric that feeds on the manufactured nostalgia for the prosperous Clinton era. Don’t believe that all our troubles will be over if we put a Democrat in the White House and put more Democrats in Congress. Many of the worst transgressions of the Bushies had their inception in the Clinton White House while the new Democratic congress hasn’t been worth the powder to blow it up. We don’t need any more Democrats like Lieberman, Landrieu, Emmanuel, Pelosi or turncoats like John Conyers. We certainly don’t need a president who is in bed with the military industrial complex or who thinks their Congressional oath to uphold the Constitution doesn’t matter. We don’t need a president that thinks corporations will solve global warming or that white-collar crooks don’t really harm anyone. This year voters must step nimbly step over old party loyalties and the reject the well-funded corporate darlings. Rather than vote for a Party, voters must be highly selective. A candidate that doesn’t walk the talk, that hasn’t demonstrated they are willing to stand up for what’s right does not deserve your vote, no matter who they are running against. Unless we make it very clear to Party leadership that we refuse to help them be the instruments of our destruction, they are going to keep on playing us for suckers. The Constitution made no provision for political parties. Right now all they do is stand between us and the candidates we want and government we deserve. Political parties are not part of the government. They are private businesses that have monopolized elections and left us out in the cold. I think we’d be better off without them. Across the board public funding would do a lot more to change the direction of the country than anyone with donkey or an elephant on their lapel ever did. Carol Davidek-Waller is a news junkie and an avid blogger. http://resetnow.blogspot.com – http://cdw-ithink.blogspot.com |
The Dems Have Helped Create The Worst President in Modern History
January 16, 2008 at 9:05 pm (Politics and News, Society, World News)
Tags: Politics, Society
Got To Check This Out:Free Software
January 15, 2008 at 12:38 am (Freebies)
Tags: Freebies, software
My Daily Bible Verse
January 12, 2008 at 1:10 am (Life)
10Who can find a worthy woman? For her price is far above rubies. 11The heart of her husband trusts in her. He shall have no lack of gain. 12She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. 13She seeks wool and flax, and works eagerly with her hands.
Are You Looking for free ebooks? Great Link Here For many topics in Ebooks « Agirlinthesouth’s Weblog
December 11, 2007 at 11:48 pm (Uncategorized)
One Sheriff Shows America How To Deal With Illegal Immigration
August 16, 2007 at 10:16 pm (Uncategorized)
While politicians have hacked and sloughed their way through the issue of illegal immigration, one sheriff in Atlanta has taken matters into his own hands by doing what the law already allows law enforcement to do — begin deportation proceedings against illegal aliens who are charged with crimes.
This Is Criminal Negligence And Criminal Penalties should be Handed Down
August 15, 2007 at 4:12 am (Politics, Society)
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del.icio.us!Outstand Blog This Explains My Angst for the 2008 Election
August 15, 2007 at 4:02 am (Life, Politics, Society, World News)
Candidates, Canidates Everywhere – And Not a One Worthy of My Vote
by Stephen Pizzo | Aug 14 2007 – 9:59am | digg_skin=’compact’;
article tools: email | print | read more Stephen Pizzo
I spent the last week coming to terms with the fact that not a single candidate running for President is worthy of the job. Not in the Democratic Party, or the GOP. And no worthy third party candidates have emerged yet either.
So I decided to sit down and try to sort out what is is I don’t seem to like about any of the current batch of candidates. Forget deep thinking and rational analysis. Because I suspect I, like most other voters, don’t caste of our final vote rationally. I believe other motivations are trump rational thinking when it comes to picking the person we hope will become our national savior every four years. Emotions like fear, personal and religious values and our old standby reason, “the lesser of two-evils.” In other words, we don’t vote with our heads. We vote with our gut.
So that’s what I tried to sort out last week. All the policy blather aside, what’s my gut reaction to these candidates. I didn’t even try to fair and balanced. And if you are looking for the most penetrating analysis of these candidates, stop reading now, because you sure a hell aren’t about to get it from what follows.
The Democrats
Hillary R. Clinton: Hillary is the anti-Christ of Democrats According to polls, 50% percent of registered have been bewitched by this shape-shifter. I figure that if you think you’re sick of George W. Bush after 7 years in office, just wait until you get a snoot full of a Hillary Clinton administration. If elected President I fear she may be the last Democrat to see the inside of the Oval office for a generation. And the same goes for the next woman nominated by either party for that office. And she’s not even much of an improvement over what we have now. Hillary is at least as big a serial liar as Bush, and just as shameful at it. For example, earlier this month she gang-banged Obama for saying he would take nukes off the table in dealing with Pakistan’s unruly, terrorist infested tribal regions. Hillary claimed it proved Obama was too unseasoned and naive to be president. But wait — just two months before that Hillary herself told reporters she would take nukes off the table in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Holy on-the-record hypocrite, Batman. I don’t want four more years of that kind of cynical duplicity, phony baloney, valueless and dangerous crap. And that’s what I fear a Hillary Clinton presidency would be. Same old, same old, only this time in a pantsuit.
Barack Obama: I had such hopes for Barack. But, so far, they have been hopes unrealized. To call the Obama campaign uninspiring would be an understatement. It verges on somnolent. I was ready and eager for a young Martin Luther King/JFK hybrid. Instead all I’ve gotten so far is a nice, smart, mild-mannered, well-spoken, well-meaning, tan version of an upwardly mobile Chicago alderman. I had hoped for more, lots more. Because, if America ever needed a no-nonsense dope-slap-upside- the-head kinda president, it’s now. But rather than swinging for knockouts, Barack has turned out to be a cross between Oprah and Dr. Phil.
John Edwards: He’s smart enough. He’s ambitions enough. He’s too pretty by half. I wouldn’t hold that against him except that he seems to care way too much about it. Something deep within tells my gut that it says something about a person when they can get a perfectly acceptable $25 haircut anywhere in the US but pays $400 for a stylist instead. Is that petty of me? Probably. But, over my 62-years of rubbing elbows with all kinds of people I’ve learned more than a bit about character. And somewhere among all that are data that gives me concern about this guy. A rich guy who billing himself a champion of the poor, who spends a year getting himself filmed working with poor people, but stops long enough to get $400 haircuts. Maybe I shouldn’t find that kind thing a turnoff, but I do. Bottom line on Edwards – He’s too cute by half (physically and politically.) The only thing about him that makes him even passingly creditable is his wife, Elizabeth, who if were running instead of her husband, I would vote for with out hesitation.
Bill Richardson: A nice guy, but reaching. Sure he’s held a lot of high-level jobs in government, but it those were his peak career moments. Richardson just doesn’t “feel” like Presidential material. VP, maybe, but not P.
Joe Biden: OMG, imagine four or eight years of having to listen to that windbag. Joe is smart– just ask and he’ll tell you. Don’t ask, and he’ll tell you – and tell you, and tell you, and tell you… Because all Joe Biden does – besides having his teeth-whitened – is talk. Poor Joe was born a century too late. He would have made a bigger splash back in mid-1800s when senatorial windbags were all the rage. Biden would make a great Secretary of State, but not a good President. Besides, if you think Bush has burned out the US military, Biden would do the same thing to the White House press corps. His entire administration would one long, non-stop extemporaneous news conference. I have visions of Helen Thomas fleeing the White House Press room screaming, “No, no… not another news conference?!!! … I can’t do it…. Let me cover golf or American Idol. Just get me out of the Biden White House….”
Chis Dodd: Don’t like him. Every time I see him I expect Madam Tussaud to show up to return him to his place in her Wax Museum.
Mike Gravel: No thanks. We already tried turning the nation over to a raving lunatic, and it hasn’t turned out well.
Dennis Kucinich: I like him. But I’m not ready for a socialistic solution to every problem that comes down the pike. While a single-payer health system is a good idea, turning the entire health care industry into not-for-profit enterprises would kill innovation. Whether liberals like to admit it or not, free enterprise is almost always more efficient and dynamic than government. Rather than removing the profit motive from medicine, the answer lays in installing and maintaining a government regulatory system that tempers inevitable free enterprise excesses.
Republicans
Rudy Giuliani: Oh man, if Republicans think Bill Clinton’s “personal habits” were an embarrassment wait until they get a taste of a Giuliani presidency. Ruddy Rudy would wear out the sheets in Lincoln bedroom. Then there’s current Mrs. Judith (don’t-call-me-Judi) Guiliani Whoa! This is one needy gal. If you think Nancy Reagan was piece of work, wait until you get a gander at Judi. Just spend a few minutes scanning the Vanity Fair profile of her. Then close your eyes and try to imagine all the things that could set Judith off as First Lady. And imagine the soap opera that would ensue when (not if, when) President Rudy decides that Judy is past her “use by” date and tries to toss her out of the White House. Talk about the War of the Roses!
John McCain: Remember the old Mr. Magoo cartoons? I do.
Mitt Romney: This guy is difficult to describe because our lexicon has no words to capture this level of slickness. (My pal, Tony Seton over at QNN suggests oleaginous.) Every time I see this guy on TV I expect him to say something like, “Do you know how much you’d save on your heating bill and maintenance if you installed our aluminum siding on your home?” Then there’s the whole Mormon thing. I know it’s politically incorrect to dump on person’s belief structure, but when it comes to choosing a new Commander-in-Chief I think we need to put some limits on that indulgence. I mean it’s unnerving enough that all the candidates running believe it’s important to trot out their spiritual creds – mostly the Christian variety. In a time when real weapons can anniliate mankind, I am uneasy that we insist on electing only certified spirit worshipers to the presidency. But Romney’s religion, Mormonism, is a bridge too far along that path. Mormons rank right up with Scientologists for unadulterated nonsensical beliefs. Would you put Tom Cruise in the White House? I hope not, (though after two Bush victories it’s clear voters are quite capable of doing just that.) Anyway, don’t ask Romney if it’s “boxers or briefs,” because it’s neither. It’s worse.
Sam Brownback: When it comes to religious nuts, Brownback is the macadamia of the GOP pack.
Tom Tancredo: The Southwest’s David Duke-lite
Mike Huckabee: Mild-mannered and nonthreatening. Huckabee is the Mr. Rogers of the GOP candidates. But if you didn’t care for your visit to Mr. Bush’s neighborhood, you won’t care for Huckabee’s either. Mike is just George minus the smirk.
Duncan Hunter: If you’re looking for a guy who really would “bomb, bomb, bomb.. bomb bomb Iran,” Slam Duncan is your man.
Ron Paul: I like this guy. His honesty is refreshing. But Ron is to GOP what Kuchinich is to the Dems. Rather than socializing everything in sight Paul would cut everything and everyone loose and let social and economic Darwinism sort out the winners and losers. Ron Paul is right about a lot of things, especially on how the US, and most other nations on earth, manipulate their currencies to create one fool’s paradise after another – each of which vaporizes when it’s bubble bursts. But Paul’s extreme libertarian solutions would have American streets looking like old Calcutta in four years.
So here I am. Fools to the left of me, clowns to the right. Stuck in the middle without a candidate to vote for.
_______
newsforreal.com
Daily News at The Smirking Chimp
August 15, 2007 at 3:49 am (Life, World News)
Daily Show: Bush Revealed as ‘Clarifier-in-Cheif’
August 13, 2007 at 11:04 am (Life, World News)
In a rare (rare=four times) interview with FOX Opinion Channel
’s Neil Cavuto, President Bush explains “in other words” what 70% of Americans can’t seem to understand — namely, every aspect of his presidency.
FOXNews Reporter: Who are you gonna believe? Me or my lying camera?
August 13, 2007 at 10:41 am (Life, Politics, World News)
FOXNews reporter Courtney Keely reports from Baghdad that the surge is working. Really, it is. Don
’t pay attention to the fact that she’s in a Baghdad market surrounded by MORE security than John McCain and every Iraqi she speaks to tells her about the death and destruction all around them.
